This special collection features articles from participants at the 8th International Designs for Learning Conference, “Conceptualizing Design in Research and Developmental Work”. The focus of the conference and the special collection is the versatility of the design concept, which extends from the theoretical and analytical level to the more practical level, where it can be used to shape concrete activities and tools for multimodal communication, teaching, and learning. The conference was held in August 2024 at Stockholm University’s Department of Education. A total of 43 abstracts, workshops, and symposia were presented, and delegates were invited to submit a full paper to the Designs for Learning Journal. Eight articles were finally included in the special collection and are presented below.
This study explores how digital assessment designs in higher education influence students’ ability to demonstrate their knowledge and realize their agency, which is a significant gap in the research literature. The increasing integration of digital tools, as well as heightened concerns about academic integrity, have led to a shift towards more controlled and monitored assessment methods. However, this shift raises concerns about potential restrictions on students’ academic freedom and their ability to influence how they present their knowledge. Assessment design plays a crucial role in determining the types of knowledge students are expected to demonstrate in various assessment tasks and how design elements influence students’ agency and their ability to engage and actively participate in producing knowledge. This study uses designs for learning and a textual analysis approach to examine the assessment designs of three professional programs at two Swedish universities. The analysis focuses on digital examination formats in order to identify the types of knowledge that are prioritized and to assess how these designs promote student agency. The results show that assessment designs can simultaneously enable and constrain students’ ability to act independently and creatively in their academic work. The findings highlight the importance of thoughtful assessment design in promoting student agency and knowledge engagement in digital educational environments. This research contributes a deeper understanding of how digital assessment designs can promote or hinder different types of knowledge and student agency in higher education.
School-leaving and higher education admission assessments in South Africa are typically summative and normative, comparing students for admission into university. However, we argue that these assessments need to be transformative, impacting the curriculum and empowering students to explore their own agency. This study is a reflective contribution based on over a decade of development and administration of school-leaving and higher education assessments. It adopts a literacies perspective, distinguishing between the ‘autonomous’ view of literacy (focused on competencies) and the ‘ideological model’ (viewing literacy as social practices). The ideological model values diverse literacy practices and challenges normative approaches that assume homogeneous student populations and stable disciplines. While normative approaches focus on identifying academic conventions and teaching proficiency within these norms, transformative approaches a) situate these conventions within contested knowledge traditions; b) elicit writers’ perspectives on these conventions; and c) explore alternative academic meaning-making that considers students’ diverse resources. At present, school-leaving and admission assessments rely on candidates’ cultural capital and socioeconomic status. As such, these assessments may disadvantage poorer students and perpetuate inequities. To transform higher education, assessments must shift from normative, summative practices to transformative, inclusive, and empowering approaches, integrating feedback that fosters student agency and acknowledges diverse literacies. Such transformative assessments, we conclude, should not merely rank students but provide input for development of curricula and provide for feedback to and from students to understand and improve their learning, thus enabling self-reflection and growth.
Understanding subject-specific texts requires interpreting representations—words, symbols, and images—in their intended senses. Many such representations are ambiguous, with meanings that shift depending on context and disciplinary conventions. This applies not only to words, for example, ‘paper’ in everyday versus academic usage, but also to symbols and images, like ‘–’, that must be interpreted in different senses depending on context. This article introduces the IRIS model (Interpreting Representations in their Intended Senses), a theoretical framework designed to capture the interpretative processes readers engage in when navigating subject language. Unlike existing models that focus primarily on vocabulary, IRIS encompasses all semiotic resources and foregrounds the discernments needed to resolve ambiguity. Analytically, it supports text studies by making explicit the interpretative demands posed by subject-specific representations. Pedagogically, it offers a tool for fostering metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness, helping learners and educators reflect on the challenges involved in interpreting subject languages.
Learning Design (LD) is gaining global traction in higher education driven by its systematic approach to supporting educators in designing teaching practices for students’ learning based on pedagogical theory and supported by design tools. While extensive research has been conducted, limited practice is shared across the Nordic and Baltic universities, contradicting the core ambition of LD to promote sharing of effective learning designs. Thus, to support sharing of practice and knowledge, this article investigates LD practices through a systematic literature review, systematic web searches, and study visits. The research aim is to uncover what LD practices exist at the Nordic and Baltic universities. In total, the research identified 26 LD practices at 16 Nordic and Baltic universities as of August 2024 and a total of 22 different design tools. It also revealed diverse LD practices ranging from open-ended, do-it-yourself (DIY) approaches to comprehensive and often orchestrated practices facilitated by educational developers or peers. In addition, the article discusses that important phases of the learning design process are missing out both when it comes to institutional support for educators as well as available learning design tools.
This study explores multilingual study guidance (MSG) teachers design for learning and the potential of immersive and interactive Virtual Reality (VR) technology to support students’ development of disciplinary knowledge through multilingual conceptual learning. Part of a co-design research project, the study draws on two teachers’ didactical designs and their creation of subject-specific VR environments, as well as their reflective evaluative discussions. Framing teaching and learning as a matter of design for learning combined with a meta-thinking framework supporting planning and evaluation of didactical designs, the participating teachers identified learning targets, how to teach, and how to organize each activity. Findings reveal that the teachers employed multimodal, dialogic, and experience-based approaches to co-construct disciplinary knowledge and language in contextually rich VR environments, stimulating critical thinking and promoting multilingual metalinguistic awareness. Despite the potential of immersive VR for inclusive and equitable learning, the study highlights a critical need for structured collaboration between MSG and subject teachers to ensure pedagogical coherence and curricular alignment. These insights contribute to the growing discourse on immersive learning design and its implications for multilingual education.
This paper examines the practical application of Stardust Odyssey: City’s Last Stand, a tabletop game designed to support experiential learning about socio-economic inequality within Thailand’s neoliberal education system. Anchored in Process Drama and Design-Based Research (DBR), the study explores how the game operates as an educational tool by analysing participants’ engagement with its mechanics during workshop sessions. Conducted with university students, educators, workers, and welfare activists, the workshops demonstrate how interactive gameplay can foster critical dialogue about systemic injustice and prompt participants to consider alternative modes of civic engagement. Departing from purely conceptual approaches, this paper foregrounds the iterative process of game design, facilitation, and reflective analysis, positioning Stardust Odyssey as a compelling model for integrating participatory drama and game-based learning into educational practice.
This discussion paper reflects on the affordances of face-to-face interaction and copresence in the light of increasingly digitized learning spaces in higher education. Especially in inequitable contexts, heightened dependence on digital platforms for teaching and learning can exacerbate inequalities in terms of student access and inclusion. This ‘digital divide’ (Van Dijk 2020) manifests in several ways, such as unequal access to laptops, lack of Wi-Fi, the high cost of data, and even basic issues such as quiet spaces to work. It is in this context that this paper considers the affordances of physical face-to-face environments in higher education. It looks at a range of higher education spaces and focuses on the way in which co-presence manifests in types of engagement and modes of representation. It begins by considering the affordances of the large-scale lecture. It then focuses on the way in which co-presence manifests in various types of engagement and modes of representation in various smaller-scale contexts (including design studios, service-learning courses and informal writing groups). It ends by reflecting on the function and importance of humour and laughter in face-to-face pedagogies, as well as the value of silence in co-presence. The aim here is clearly not to compare or to promote face-to-face pedagogies over online interactions, but rather to reflect on the importance of contextual factors as well as the gains and losses of different modes of engagement for teaching and learning. Through this discussion, the paper contends that opening up the semiotic space of face-to-face interaction through multimodal designs for learning can work towards inclusion and can address issues of diversity in interesting ways.
The best instructional practices for immersive virtual reality (IVR) use in workplace learning contexts remain undefined after decades of research. Increasing the methodological range and rigor in the study of educational IVR have been proposed. To address these issues, we performed a qualitative study that contributed to the development of a pedagogical model for IVR safety training. The model is based on simulation training and draws on sociocultural and cognitivist perspectives on learning. Our research question was ‘What kind of training goals do the safety trainers perceive for their organizations, themselves, and the learners?’ Thematic interviews were performed on 18 safety trainers from two work organizations to gain insight into their professional perceptions. The interview data was subjected to deductive and inductive qualitative content analyses. Our findings revealed that the trainers consider upholding organizational safety culture and practices that ensure everyone’s safety the most important goal on all levels, despite understanding the role of external drivers for safety such as legislation and regulations. The findings contributed to the conceptualization of the pedagogical model for IVR safety training prior to the training interventions.
In this study, we apply theories about self-efficacy, empowerment and motivation to account for the phenomena that people with diabetes Mellitus type 1 express as being influential for people with diabetes’ behaviour regarding self-regulation. They must make significant changes to their lifestyle, to keep the disease stabilized. The changes can be cumbersome and hard to implement why people with diabetes receive training in self-regulation. For many people it can be challenging to comply with the recommendations. We conducted field observations and surveys to understand how people with diabetes experience their perceived self-efficacy, and what motivates them to perform blood sugar measurements and physical activities. We found differences in people with diabetes’ ability to follow the recommendation based on gender, motivation, and their level of self-efficacy. We also found indications on how a motivational dialog may affect both professionals and people with diabetes. Thus, we suggest that guidance of people with diabetes should be based on an emancipating motivational approach such enabling the possibility of strengthening the people with diabetes’ motivation and thereby their self-efficacy. Through these processes, the people with diabetes may become able to achieve a higher level of health literacy such experiencing a better outcome of their self-regulation. With this paper we contribute to the contemporary overall knowledge about the diabetes field, such our investigation focus on people with diabetes ability to act upon information provided by healthcare professionals and how to best approach the issues people with diabetes experience as being essential for their general well-being and everyday lives.
This special collection contains articles from participants in the 7th International Designs for Learning Conference – Remediation of Learning. The focus of the conference and the special collection is on current changes in the designs of information and knowledge representations and their consequences on how we understand and evaluate learning and communication. The conference was held in May 2021 and due to the pandemic it was run digitally through Zoom. A total of 43 abstracts were submitted, and all delegates were invited to submit a full paper to the Designs for Learning Journal. Five articles were finally included in the special collection and are presented below, along with an acknowledgement of the abstracts presented during the conference.
Real-world applications of statistics are rarely ‘off the top of your head’; however, statistics and research methods courses default to closed-book exams that only test rote learning. Trending research supports open-book exams testing the application of student knowledge rather than memory, however statistics courses in psychology are lagging amidst fears of cheating in online open-book multiple-choice exams. The aim of this study was twofold; first, to develop an online open-book multiple-choice exam that tests the application of psychology statistics and research methods knowledge, and second, to demonstrate that it is just as reliable a source of final grades as traditional closed-book exams. We compared results from a new Applied Exam (N = 104 undergraduate third-year psychology statistics students) with the previous year’s Traditional Exam (N = 81), correlating these with Research Report grades (the best course-assessment indicator of real-world performance). Similarly strong positive correlations were observed between the written assessments and the Traditional Exam (.59**) or Applied Exam (.54**), and both exams display comparable bell curves for grade differentiation, suggesting we can depend on the new Applied Exam for final course grade data. It also reflects a better alignment with course objectives and graduate qualities for effective problem solving in novel situations. Automated assessment of applied knowledge benefits psychology instructors and organisations in reducing administration, and psychology students by alleviating the anxiety in closed-book invigilated exams. Together this presents an opportunity to improve student outcomes by encouraging the development of real-world skills, preparing them for competitive job markets that value critical thinking.
In this study, the aim is to explore what genres can be found in applications used in preschool as a way to facilitate preschool teachers’ informed choices and raise awareness concerning the importance of choosing digital content carefully. In particular, applications that facilitate communication beyond a verbal majority language are in focus in this study. The research questions concern what the affordances are of applications used in preschool in relation to children’s agency and multilingual competencies and which kinds of genres that emerge from the applications’ affordances. Analyses of the applications were based on a social semiotic approach, in combination with the notion of translanguaging, taking into account many modes of communication, as well as different languages. The results illustrate how affordances include possibilities to listen to several spoken languages, opportunities to create documentation and produce stories in many different modes, including the verbal language of choice, but also restraints such as lack of opportunities for children’s agency in some applications with more closed composition. 10 genres are proposed which consist of three monolingual app-genres: talking picture books, storytelling and games, and seven app-genres that allow for several languages: talking picture books in more languages, multilingual storytelling, storytelling with recording possibilities, boardgames with recording possibilities, communication apps, draw-and-record apps and documentation apps. Conclusions highlight the importance of careful selection when choosing digital content in educational settings for younger children and that some of the app-genres proposed could be seen as facilitating digital pedagogical translanguaging.
This paper investigates how to reduce the theory-practice gap by making research the object of discussion for researchers and practitioners. The study is situated in the wicked problem of using digital technology in mathematics education. To investigate this problem a workshop of the format data-sprint is conducted, investigating the challenges and potentials related to facilitating workshops interpreting visualizations of research literature to support teacher dialogue of digital technology in mathematics education. Two potentials and two challenges are identified in the analysis.
While learning activities and text production in language subjects typically include multiple forms of multimodal expression, assessment in the subjects continues to a great extent to depend on students’ written texts. As a contribution to an increasing call for alignment of curricular activities and assessment, this article explores an approach to assessment of upper secondary students’ production of multimodal persuasive texts in the subject of English as an additional language (EAL). The article reports from a design-based study comprising two classroom interventions where assessment of students’ multimodal texts was conducted separately by peer groups and the teacher and researcher in collaboration, applying assessment criteria informed by multimodal social semiotic theory and operationalisations of communicative competence. Comparing the results of peer and teacher assessment of students’ multimodal persuasive texts, agreement was found relating to representational, interactional, and compositional aspects of the texts, whereas differences in views mostly concerned nuances in interpersonal aspects. Unpacking these nuances, the article concludes that peers’ and teachers’ assessments of multimodal texts complement each other in ways that can prompt fruitful discussions on meaning making in the light of context and social factors and thus contribute to heightened semiotic awareness and a broader recognition of the students’ communicative competence in the subject.
Computational thinking (CT) has become central to introducing digital artefacts for educational use. However, little is known about implementing CT in the mathematical school curriculum, and many educational staff members have not been introduced to CT in their initial training. Introducing CT in an educational setting calls for interventions that allow educational staff to adopt new concepts and to explore ways of implementing CT and digital artefacts to support students’ computational and mathematical understanding. This article focuses on formative interventions applied in the form of Change Laboratory to implement digital artefacts with a particular interest with regard to educational staff’s expansive learning processes. To foster such expansive learning processes, double stimulation methods were introduced to enable educational staff to analyse and reflect on their work practices collectively. The research was conducted as an ethnographic intervention study in a primary school in Denmark. It began in 2019 and was completed in 2021. Participants were primary school students followed from 2nd grade to 3rd, alongside their math teacher and social educator. The data consisted of five Change Laboratory sessions fully transcribed from video recordings, including classroom activities between sessions. Through a Cultural Historical Activity Theory lens, the article concludes that by mapping educational staff’s expansive learning actions, it is possible to identify how the participants collectively change their activities or not. Thus, analysing which phase of double stimulation that triggers a specific learning action provides knowledge about integrating CT and digital artefacts to support mathematical understanding.
The presence of digital technologies in classroom settings is relentlessly getting stronger and has shown to have powerful playful qualities. In recent years, digital game-based learning (DGBL) has been introduced in schools. In this paper we explore game-based design activities to unfold playful and creative actions and interactions among children. The study is based on two cases, where game design activities were applied in both analogue and digital form. The unit of analysis is game design activities. The research questions posed in this study are: (1) What activities develop when school children design games in two similarly framed workshop cases, where one included analogue material and the other a combination of analogue and digital material?, and (2) How do children interact in a learning environment framed by purely analogue-based material as opposed to a learning environment framed by a combination of analogue and digital material? A thematic analysis identified three themes: exploratory activities; combinational activities; and transformative activities. These themes suggest that the game design workshop sessions including only analogue material facilitated playfulness promoting creative actions in children’s production of different ideational considerations. In a mixed activity combining analogue and digital material, creativity in the form of fluency was represented by the way the children produced their ideas, which opened up for playfulness, e.g. in the form of humour. The analysis showed that a procedural activity design including pre-designed theme framing children’s constructions facilitated an open-ended activity.
Involving children in a participatory research design entails certain ethical challenges that require the researcher to consider how to respond and act ‘right here and right now’. All child and childhood researchers are familiar with their obligation to inform and obtain consent from parents and teachers, before involving children in research. However, even with the signed consent, the research can easily take another direction than first planned. This study explored how involving children in research forces ethical dilemmas in-situ which require a ‘right here and right now’ response from the researcher. Data from this study were gathered through the multi-method mosaic approach. Originally, this study focused on children’s learning paths as they transition from pre-school to primary school, however, when analysing the transcribed and coded data through a constructivist grounded theory, we revealed micro-ethical moments where the research repeatedly took another direction than first planned. Thus, the research topic changed focus. Based on the analysis of interview transcripts, two types of ethical considerations emerged as important when involving children in research: (1) researchers’ response in-situ when micro-ethical moments occur (2) continuing the data collection when the research topic is changing. Considering this, the results point to a need for reframing the research design which includes what we have termed ‘ethical sensitivity’ when it comes to processual aspects of data generation. The process may entail arising ethical dilemmas, which in turn may influence how the children participate in the research and the generated data.
In Sweden, upper secondary school teachers made a swift transition into emergency remote teaching in 2020 due to the outbreak of covid-19. This paper reports on a Design-Based Research intervention in which professional development was designed using the Blended Learning Adoption framework, to support teachers to develop their teaching practices online. Twenty-six teachers participated in the intervention which spanned six months. Data was analysed using thematic analysis. Key results revealed that the pandemic had become an impetus for change, for many teachers, but far from all. Emerging teaching practices in synchronous online learning included: inviting special needs pedagogues in parallel breakout rooms, and grouping and re-grouping students when facilitating varied collaboration. Apart from realising new potentials of online teaching and learning, teachers identified emerging challenges such as: new ways of cheating, ethical aspects of accessing students' private homes via cameras and a lack of guidelines on managing disengagement. Conclusively, teacher's professional development and new experiences elicit new practices that could benefit teachers after the pandemic. Professional development during uncertain times and design principles supporting intervention ownership transfer are discussed.
This article explores how arguments are made in student essays through the use of writing and visual resources. The data set comprises 54 essays with a passing grade from students in their final year of upper secondary school in Sweden. The data is analysed using a multimodal approach to knowledge representation on arguments in essays, involving analysis of textual composition and content in both written text and visual resources. The study gives an insight into how students design essays in relation to academic requirements, how their arguments realise epistemological commitments, and what affordances are given through the use of writing and visual resources. The results reveal that academic argumentation varies considerably between the essays. There is an overrepresentation of written and declarative knowledge in the essays, where the arguments are grounded in various web-based sources, and visualisations are used for making conceptualisation and classification more salient in writing. Both written and visual resources offer affordances in the making of arguments on the bases of the modes for communication. This article concludes that there are many high demands of knowledge defined for the task of preparing for higher education, which are not easily represented in the students’ arguments in essays.
